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Chapter 10: Session 10

I once asked a man who had tried to kill me. I had the chance to ask him because he finally became a sannyasin. I asked, “Now we are both alone, tell me why you wanted to kill me.” In those days, at Woodlands in Bombay, I used to give sannyas to people alone in my room. I said, “We are alone. I can give you sannyas, there is no problem in it. First become a sannyasin, then tell me the purpose, why you wanted to kill me. If you can convince me I will stop breathing here and now in front of you.”

He started weeping and crying and holding my feet. I said, “This won’t do, you have to convince me of the purpose.”

He said, “I was just an idiot. There is nothing I can say to you.” Perhaps that is the reason why an absolutely harmless man like me has been attacked in every possible way. I have been given poison..

Just the other day someone came to me very worried because Gudia had said in a metaphorical way that “If Bhagwan dies I will be relieved.”

Naturally the person was very disturbed. She told me, “Now I cannot even sleep, because Vivek is your caretaker, and she told me she would be relieved if you were dead! This is dangerous - she could poison you!”

I laughed and said, “Come to your senses! She must have been talking metaphorically. After being ten years with me anybody can become a philosopher; a little bit of metaphysics, and a little bit of a metaphor, that’s all it is. You need not be worried. She would be the last person in the whole universe who could harm me. I could harm myself, but she would not.so don’t be worried.”

But I can understand her worry.

I said, “I understand, but don’t be worried. Gudia goes through tantrums once in a while but even then she has not harmed me. She cannot, it is impossible for her. Yes,” I said, “that is impossible.”

Once in a while anybody can have a tantrum, particularly a woman; and more so if she has to live twenty-four hours a day, or maybe more, with a man like me, who is not nice at all; who is always hard, and always trying to push you to the very edge, and who does not allow you to come back. He goes on and on pushing and telling you to “Jump before you think!”

My Nani was certainly similar to Gudia, particularly when she was in a tantrum. I have seen her in a tantrum, but I was never worried. I have seen her pull her gun out and rush toward my grandfather’s room. But I continued what I was doing. She asked me, “Are you not afraid?”

I said, “You go on and do your work and let me do mine.”

She laughed, saying “You are a strange boy. I am going to kill your grandfather and you are trying to make a house out of playing cards. Are you mad or something?”

I said, “You just go and kill that old man. I have always dreamed of doing it myself, so why should I worry? Don’t disturb me.”